


aire soy

by epiproctan



Series: a boy and his alien tentacle sex monster [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Consentacles, Other, Post-Season/Series 04, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Sex, hints of shklance if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 21:12:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16249898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiproctan/pseuds/epiproctan
Summary: Keith makes a friend and makes a home.





	aire soy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flyingisland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/gifts).



> for one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life. have a great birthday moth <3
> 
> a huge thanks to mai for saving my ass with her beautiful betaing skills and traffy for being there right away when i panickedly messaged her last minute saying i needed a title in spanish

It’s kind of strange, the places that can become your home if you let them. Places that you wouldn’t imagine yourself leaving pieces of your heart, that a past version of you wouldn’t have considered spending your time comfortably. Most people make their homes in houses and apartments, on the planets inhabited by their ancestors, in ships darting between quadrants and landing on faraway moons. Some people make their homes on castles that have the ability to travel through the cosmos. Some people make their homes in the cockpit and the mental embrace of a magical robotic war weapon. Some people make homes between two black holes and beside a giant star. Some people don’t make homes in places like that at all.

Some people make homes in caves dripping with unseen runoff water, in echoing caverns so dark that you can’t tell where the walls or ceiling are. Some people come to places like this time and time again and begin to feel so comfortable there, so right there, that it seems difficult to remember that just a few movements ago, this place seemed dark and unfamiliar.

It makes sense for Keith, because “home” has always been a transitory thing. The idea of a home is a foreign concept, and maybe that’s why he can assign it to a place like this, if he was going to assign it anywhere. He doesn’t think it’s his miniscule and Spartan bunk on the Blade of Marmora base. Something about the word home elicits a kind of warmth, and Keith has never felt that there. It’s  _ definitely _ not his room back on the Castle-ship, though it may once have been. It’s not a blue planet on some faraway edge of the universe, and it’s not a dilapidated shack out in the middle of the desert.

If Keith were ever to entertain thoughts so useless as home being a person, the way they do in books and movies and quotes that middle-aged married women frame and hang in their kitchens, he might’ve found more luck in placing a home that way. But he’s not deluded enough to think that more than houses, more than ships built to withstand the extreme cold of space, people last long enough in your life to make a home inside of. Before you can even lay your foundation, they’re gone. That’s just how it works.

In light of that, it makes sense to Keith that a cave, an ancient and natural thing, something that’s been around since long before he was born and will be around long after he dies, is a suitable home. And by home, he isn’t sure that he means a place where he can spend the rest of his days, because that’s never been a thing for him either. But somewhere he feels comfortable. Somewhere he feels relaxed. Somewhere he wants to come again and again.

It helps, he thinks, that this is the one place he can strip off his Blade of Marmora armor, reach into the inky darkness, and absolutely, completely, forget about his life for an hour or two.

Keith is strung upside down. There’s a grip around his thighs, binding his legs together tightly, from which he hangs. Likewise his arms are stuck at his sides, tethered there tightly enough that he absently wonders if he’ll have to work the circulation back into his hands after all is said and done. His eyes are shut, though he wouldn’t be able to see anything if he opened them anyway. He’s deep enough into the cave that he’s sure that the light of any sun has never fallen on this rock. His mouth is open, lips wet, tongue forced to the bottom of his mouth. He can barely breathe in shuddering breaths around the bulk forcing itself into his throat. Right under the junction of his legs, he can feel something prodding between his flush thighs, just before another curls around his thus-far neglected cock.

To someone who’s never really known what a home is, this is close enough.

Keith relaxes his throat, lets the tentacle exploring the back of his mouth do what it wants. He can’t say that this was something he thought he’d ever actively want to happen to him, but now that it is he’s finding out that it’s not merely  _ not bad _ , it’s really pretty enjoyable. The sensation in his throat paired with the searching, writhing, curious tendrils traveling across the rest of him is really good at making him drop his worries and cares at the mouth of this cave in the same way that he drops his armor and his knife.

Something curls and suckles by his head, and his entire body jolts with the onslaught of sensation. It’s wet, everything around him, and he can feel the slick slide of it on him, up and down, over and over and over. By this point, it knows what he likes, and knows what he likes  _ too much _ . It always slows and calms before he can rise to any real pleasure, but it doesn’t stop.

This has been going on for awhile now. Long enough that he thinks his fingers are probably pruney with the slick that gushes off the creature. This is how it goes. This time and every time. He’s taken apart piece by piece, unwound and disoriented until he can’t remember that his name is Keith, that he is part Galra, that he owns a knife, that he once piloted the Red Lion of Voltron, that there’s a war going on. None of that  _ matters _ , not here under the feeling of being touched until his mind goes hazy.

That’s why he comes here. That’s why this is home. It’s the only place he can come to leave it all behind him and just exist as himself.

He knows that homes are usually filled with things like plush, comfortable beds, like home-cooked food, like people who love you. But Keith doesn’t have those things. He never has, and part of him imagines that he never will.

But what he does have is this: a sound that wordlessly escapes his throat as his entire body jolts with the burst of sensation up his spine. A mind-blanking onslaught of physical feeling. In this moment, he feels good, and nothing else matters than just that.

He’s fawn-limbed and light-headed as he’s gently returned to the ground. He doesn’t even try to pull himself together until his heart has stopped pounding, until the moisture on his skin is cool and drying. The wet slither of his friend has long since faded into the echoing distance. He’s alone again. 

* * *

 

“Keith.”

Keith stops short. He knows what he looks like. His hair is gummy with slick, matted together in places. He has red textured stripes pressed into the parts of his skin visible under his armor, reminders of the creature’s arms wrapping around him and holding him in place. He straightened out his uniform on the way back, but he’s sure there are places where the dirt of the cave has smudged against it or the folds of it are still rumpled. He always hopes that no one will catch him coming in after one of his trips, but today his luck falls through.

He turns, and Kolivan is standing at the end of the hallway, arms crossed over his chest.

“You were at that planet again.”

It isn’t a question. It’s a statement of fact, and one that Keith can’t deny.

From Keith’s perspective, there really isn’t a reason for Kolivan’s express disappointment in him. Keith only does this on his own time, never when he’s supposed to be on a mission or helping out around the base. It’s not like he’s doing any of those big forbidden things, like putting himself in danger for others or prioritizing lives over the mission. He’s specifically avoiding the big bad “E” word— _ emotion _ —by fucking a creature that, as far as he’s aware, has no feelings. It’s not like Keith can fall in love with a faceless, voiceless entity that lives in a cave.

But Kolivan doesn’t like it. It’s not the first time he’s caught Keith like this. It’s not the first time he’s sounded disappointed in him because of it.

“Yes,” Keith says.

Kolivan is staring at his face, which Keith is sure he cleaned off to the best of his ability, but one thing he’s never been too good at is cleaning the emotion off of it. That’s probably what he’s looking for.

“You know we can’t afford having any kind of distractions,” Kolivan says.

When Kolivan talks like this, Keith feels like the person he’s really failed is himself. He wonders if whoever left him this knife had ever been in a situation where they had gotten too distracted, or if he’s the only one who’s ever had to be given this speech. He wants to say it’s not his fault, it’s not his fault that sometimes this war feels like water rising around his ears and the only way to work the knots out of his shoulders for once is to have them fucked out of him. But he knows it is his fault. He knows what Kolivan is going to ask of him, and he’s not going to argue with it.

“For the good of the team,” Kolivan says. “Stop going there.”

Keith quietly nods once, and heads back to his room to shower.

* * *

 

“Hey,” Keith says.

He doesn’t know when he got into the habit of saying hello. Or talking to it at all. It was sometime between when he left the Castle-ship for the last time and the battle at Naxzela, but it’s something he does now. It’s not as though he ever gets a response, so there’s no point in it, but Keith uses his voice so infrequently these days he begins to wonder what it sounds like. When the cave is empty, he can hear it bounce back at him from the walls, and it almost feels like there’s someone with him.

Keith reaches up and lowers his hood, deactivating his mask.

“Kolivan caught me coming back last time,” he says, starting to wriggle out of his armor. “So I can’t come here anymore. This is goodbye, I guess.”

From somewhere deep inside the cave he hears the telltale sound of something large and heavy dragging itself over rock. He pulls the suit away from his shoulders, he kicks off his shoes with little regard for where they land. They’re going to get wet anyway, and he’ll pick them up later.

“Better make it good,” he says. He wears a trace of a smile, mostly because there’s never a time when the thing that lives inside these walls doesn’t make it good.

He has his pants off one leg and is working on the other when it comes for him. Unannounced, it whips him up by the calves, cradling his upper body to keep him from cracking his head on the cave floor. His entire suit still dangles from his ankle, but a gentle tugging soon parts it from his body. Distantly, he hears it drop to the floor beneath him, but he’s more distracted by the way his entire body is rapidly being cocooned by writhing limbs so strong he couldn’t break out of them if he tried.

He’s never tried. He’s never had reason to, because he’s never wanted to. Now is no exception. He melts into the touch like his bones are malleable and his muscle is made of candle wax under the heat of the organic thing around him. He lets it pull his wrists together behind his back, and hold them there, firm. He lets his ankles be pulled apart, his inner thighs be caressed as something runs up between them. He lets it all happen, and he enjoys it.

Part of him still has the capacity to recognize that he’s disappointed. Part of him realizes that he’ll miss the way he feels here, that with his one source of stress relief gone he will have to learn to survive without release, without touch, without warmth. Part of him knows that this is the latest goodbye in a never-ending string, and he doesn’t like the way that tastes in his mouth. 

But he bucks his hips against the creature until all of those thoughts are erased from his mind. He loses himself in the sensations of it around him, and in him, until his own name doesn’t hold any meaning for him anymore.

By the time he’s lowered carefully to the ground, he feels better physically. It takes a long moment for his feelings to work their way back up his chest and into his throat. He dresses slowly, basking in the feeling, soaking it through his pores. He’s probably not going to think of this again. It’s a weird thing to miss, and he’s good at compartmentalizing. He can shove anything to the back of his mind if he thinks it’ll interfere with his current goals.  _ Almost _ anything.

But something about the dark anonymity of the cave, the warmth that still crawls over his skin, the knowledge that there’s something in here that  _ knows _ him, is a feeling that he’ll feel the lack of in his life in his quiet moments.

He zips his suit shut. He bends to scoop up his knife from the cold, hard ground.

“Bye,” Keith says, and turns to exit from the cave. The way is dark, cold, and narrow. He starts forward.

**Bring me.**

Keith drops his knife. It clatters loudly to the floor.

“What?” he says, out loud, though the voice he just heard was distinctively not made with vibrations in the air. If he was to describe it, he’d say it sounded like something inside of his head, the same way he could grasp wisps of the other Paladins’ emotions when they were linked through Voltron.

It’s possible he imagined it. That too many sleepless nights and dangerous days have left him addled. But he feels the echo of it in his gut.

**Bring me,** it repeats.  **Take me with you.**

Keith’s never been a big believer in ghost stories but a chill runs up his spine. He spins around but there’s nothing to see in the lightless cavern. It’s too dark to see his own hands.

“Hello?” he calls out, and his voice doesn’t echo. The cave is still thick with the presence of the creature, which isn’t something he’s ever experienced before. It usually retreats right after they’re done. “Is someone there?”

**Bring me.**

He’s alone in this cave. He has to be. He would have known if there was someone else in here. It’s just him. Him and….

The creature.

Keith reaches out a hand, and it comes into contact with smooth, slick, warm flesh.

“Is that you?” he asks.

Something moist circles his wrist loosely. It feels like a confirmation.

**Take me with you.**

Keith is in the habit of acting before he thinks.

“Alright,” he says. “Come on then.”

The planet is dark by the time he gets outside. It’s a good thing, according to the voice—or is it a feeling?—in the back of his mind. It can’t survive in the direct light of a close sun or it will dry out, wither, and die. But it’s so dark here now, under a moonless sky, under the canopy of the mountain forest, that Keith can’t really catch a good view of the creature he just agreed to take home with him.

He’s never really thought too hard about what it might look like. It’s a little silly, now that he considers it. But he’s never really given thought to the fact that it might have a form beyond the way its tapered limbs curl out of the darkness. Perhaps it’s just a tangled ball of tentacles originating at a nucleus, or maybe it’s squid-looking, with a beak and enormous, dark eyes. He doesn’t know if it could have a body, or a face, or legs, or a mouth, but he can hear it moving heavily along the ground behind him.

He considers that he really doesn’t know anything at all about this creature. The locals seem to trust it. In fact, he’s learned over his visits here that it’s regarded as some sort of deity among them. They’ve never had an issue involving it, no stories of terrified casualties or individuals forced into anything against their will, at least in the accounts Keith has come across. But there’s a difference between worshipping the monster who lives in the mountains and inviting it home to live on your war base with you.

Maybe this is the Galran version of some early onset quarterlife crisis.

Or maybe it’s more the equivalent of a kid finding a stray cat and bringing it home tucked in the folds of their jacket.

“My ship’s this way,” Keith says, half turning to address the creature.

He inhales sharply. It’s dark but the thing in his peripherals is enormous. He can’t make out its full size because it blends in with the shadow of overhead trees in the clouded unlit sky, but it’s enough to make him wonder if they can fit inside the little pod he brought along.

It can, it turns out, and it does.

Inside Keith dims the lights. He does it ostensibly to make sure the light-sensitive creature is comfortable, but maybe also because he isn’t sure that he’s ready to look at it. He’s living on the crest of his impulse here, and seeing a creature he’s only  _ felt _ and  _ heard _ before will remind himself that his actions have consequences, and maybe those consequences are that he’s now responsible for an enormous mysterious monster from the subterranean depths of a faraway planet.

But for the first time in his life someone (some _ thing _ , he reminds himself) has asked him to take it with him. And he couldn’t just ignore that.

If there’s a problem, he’ll take it back. He can always come here to this cave. He can turn around and return it anytime he wants. He’s faced worse. That’s what he tells himself as the pod hums to life under him.

In the glow of the controls he can see the tapered ends of tentacles writhing in his peripherals. It pries something up within him, like a rock tugged out of its place in the dirt, revealing all the creatures that live under it to the light of day. Keith has always known what he was dealing with in that cave. He’s felt these very limbs curl around his own, slip their way into his mouth, drive deep into him. He had never truly considered that they were a thing he could potentially see. He had never considered that they might reflect light, in the presence of it.

They’re a very pale blue. Almost white. Ghostly. It’s a lovely color.

“Are you ready?” he asks out loud. He’s giving them both a last chance.

**Yes,** it says.

The engine roars to life, and Keith’s practiced hands sing over the controls until they’re spearing out of the atmosphere.

The trip to the base takes place in silence. Keith has developed a habit of muttering to himself over the ship’s controls, but out of respect for his passenger he remains quiet. He tells himself it’s not because he’s unsettled by its speech, not because he doesn’t want to hear its booming replies filling the inside of his skull. In all the time he had been visiting this creature, he hadn’t assumed that it had a  _ voice _ . That it had thoughts, or that it could convey them to him.

That in itself brings up a slew of moral issues that Keith isn’t going to work through right now, or maybe ever, so instead he wonders about this creature’s life. If it has ever contacted anyone else, or if the silence Keith has come to associate with it was the same for everyone and he was the sole recipient of its requests. He supposes it’s unlikely that it’s ever asked anyone to take it home before. Though then again, there’s always the possibility that it does this regularly and eats its unwitting victim before somehow making it back to its cave.

Keith has already made a decision though. Somehow, weirdly enough, he feels attached. Attached and trusting. Taking home a sex monster he found in the mountains of a backwater planet is less dangerous than the other sorts of dangers he faces daily. Keith knows what it is to take risks, to gamble his life and trust his own hands to get him out of murky situations.

So he’s very careful with his passenger. He pilots more gently than he ever does, unsure of how fragile it is, or if it has to capacity to get motion sick. He plans as he goes.

They arrive, thankfully, in the middle of the sleep cycle. Keith has a million questions, but for now he tiptoes around the dimmed halls, the feel of something enormous following at his heels. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, but it’s not fear he feels.

Keith has never brought anyone home before. He thinks maybe at his age, it’s a normal thing to bring partners back to the place where you have a bed. This, somehow, doesn’t seem to overlap in any way with the typical experience of that. Keith’s never quite had the same developmental processes as what he’s seen in movies or read in books.

But he does have to be very quiet. Somehow, he gets the idea that Kolivan wouldn’t be pleased to find this here. He tells the creature as much, careful not to turn and look at it directly. It seems to understand.

He leads it through the base to a large, dark room. He lets it in, facing away as it crawls through the door.

“What do I feed you?” Keith asks, once it seems to be settled.

It passes along the idea that whatever Keith eats is probably suitable for it. It thrives more off energy anyway. Energy like the kind that Keith provides to it. Keith flushes at the thought, but he understands.

Keith brings it the largest tub he can carry filled with water. He finds another of a similar size and fills it with food goo, grateful that everything is quiet around the base. No one intercepts him. They’re all asleep, building energy for the struggles that the following day will present them. It’s the right thing to do.

“Is this enough?” he asks the darkness.

In the edges of his thoughts, it seems pleased.  

After this, he isn’t sure what to do with himself. Should he stay and make conversation? Should he prepare himself for another round of sex? That idea makes a shudder run through him. He’s exhausted from the day, and it’s the middle of the night. More than anything, he wants to sleep.

He tells this to the creature, which doesn’t reply. Keith takes that as permission to leave and returns to his cramped cabin, where he readies himself for sleep and lies down on his cot.

When the damp touch comes on his foot, his instinctive reaction is self-defense. He has his knife unsheathed in the time it would take a snap of lightning to appear and vanish. But the touch is just familiar enough that his panic flares and immediately dies. He knows this. This moist tendril creeping up his ankle.

And certainly, this could be his end. This could be the creature coming for him in the dead of night, ready to devour him whole. But unlike even its sensual touches in the cave, this is slow and unconstricting. It doesn’t wind its way around his calf like it normally would. It doesn’t pry its way under his clothes, or yank him into the air.

Keith looks up, and in the dim lighting of his room he can see where it came from. Five or six thick tentacles have jammed themselves through the ventilation shafts and curl towards him from the ceiling. The room where Keith is lodging his new roommate is just above this one, so it makes sense that it would be able to reach him from there, given its size. What amazes Keith is that it was able to find him.

Again, he’s reminded that he has no idea what exactly it is that he’s invited into his home. Into his  _ bedroom _ . But the tentacles that seek out his skin now are not aggressive. They slither along his clothed body, leaving wet trails as they go, coaxing him back down onto the mattress. When he lies flat again, they gather around him, not tethering or chaining but simply holding.

They’re warm. They’re warm and they feel alive, organic. Keith finds that he likes the feel of it against him, likes the sensation of something with its own heat moving on him. They curl around him loosely, and Keith feels here in his bed for the first time what he did in the cave: cradled, cared for, comforted. They’re all around him, and his mind, his body, are able to relax completely as the tip of one gently traces a repetitive motion over his forehead.

Keith isn’t sure when he falls asleep, but he is aware that when he wakes up the tentacles are still tangled up in his limbs. One is threaded between the fingers of his right hand, weaving over and under before wrapping around his thumb. Another is curled over his hip, and a third lines his chest. None of them are anywhere near where he normally expects them, like his mouth, or his ass, or his cock.

It’s not time to wake up yet according to his bedside ticker, so he resettles, and the tentacles move with him, shifting to make themselves comfortable around him. It isn’t until he wraps his arms around one and gathers it close to his chest that he realizes what’s happening here.

He’s  _ cuddling _ . More than that, he’s  _ being cuddled _ .

It’s a foreign thought. He can’t recall ever being cuddled by anybody—any _ thing _ —before. Maybe his mother, whoever she was, had snuggled with him as a baby, but any memories of that are gone along with memories of her. Keith has never known this kind of nonsexual intimacy, if this could be called that, and it’s admittedly strange to him that he gets to experience it with a sex monster that came from a cave of all things.

Maybe in the night it’ll wrap its prehensile limbs around his neck and squeeze until his head pops off, but if he’s to be completely honest, right now Keith is too damn drowsy and cozy to care.

But he wakes in the morning without a struggle. Keith feels better-rested than he has in months, in  _ years _ . Probably since the night before Shiro waved goodbye to him as he stepped onto the elevator into pre-flight quarantine on Earth. And it shows, if the sideways glance Kolivan gives him later when they meet in the galley is any indication.

He has to be careful. Keith knows that he has to be careful. If Kolivan catches wind of his new bedmate, if  _ anyone _ does, he knows he’s going to be in trouble. He doesn’t think there’s anyone on this ship who wouldn’t report something like this back to Kolivan if they came across it. And with this knowledge in Kolivan’s hands, anything could happen. Keith knows that until this point the extent of Kolivan’s disciplinary actions have been calm scoldings and the sort of disappointment guilt-trips that fathers can pull off best, regardless of where in the universe they come from.

But this is a matter of security. Keith has brought an unknown being onto the base. And not just any base, the  _ central _ base. Keith has his own reservations about the whole thing still, but he knows they’re mild compared to what Kolivan’s vehement and absolute refusal will be if he discovers what Keith has hidden in the storage unit above his bedroom.

Keith doesn’t know what Kolivan might do at that point. He doubts that Kolivan would kill a living creature that hasn’t been proven guilty, but he will likely at least return it to where it came from. That wouldn’t be a terrible fate for it, but Keith is also concerned for himself. Kolivan thinks, probably, that Keith knows better than this. For a trespass this extensive, he could choose to kick Keith out of the Blade.

It wouldn’t be the first time Keith has been forcefully ejected from the place he kept his bed. But that doesn’t make it easier. He would rather it didn’t come to that.

So the obvious answer is this: the new presence on the ship must be masked at all costs.

This means that Keith has to check in on the storage room. It’s still dark inside, but from the light peeking in through the door, Keith can see the tubs he left last night. They’re still half-full, and from the fringes between the darkness and the light, pale, wiggling shapes wave at him.

In the way that Keith has become accustomed to in the cave he begins to talk. He tells the creature out loud about his fear of getting caught. And now, knowing that it can understand him, he gives it basic commands.  _ Don’t make noise. Don’t leave this room. Don’t let anyone know you’re here. _

It listens, or so Keith presumes, in silence.

When Keith is finished, he asks, “Got it?”

It does. It gets it. The voice that transfers ideas into his his head is neither masculine nor feminine, neither high nor deep. It sounds like Keith’s own thoughts, in a way. And it promises to follow his directions, for Keith’s safety.

“Thanks,” Keith says.

**Thank you as well,** it replies.

Keith feels something quiet rise in his chest at that. He isn’t sure what it is about the simple politeness offered to him that makes him suddenly feel so endeared, but if an enormous creature taken from the inside of a cave can be cute, Keith thinks this one is.

Without thinking about it, he holds a hand out towards the darkness. Almost immediately, something slick and warm meets it, curling around his hand, flicking over his wrist. It gives his hand a gentle squeeze, and so Keith returns it, careful to keep his grip loose. The touch then retreats, and Keith finds himself dizzy in the darkness of the room.

“I’ll be back later,” he promises, and darts out.

* * *

 

At first, nothing changes. Nothing more than the obvious. He brings food and water up a few times a day. He speaks to it when he goes to visit. It slides its tentacles into his bed at night, and he falls asleep with their tips stroking warm, comfortable patterns over his skin. He sleeps well and wakes up feeling warm. A certain fatigue that he’d never noticed until now seeps out of his bones.

On the third day since Keith brought the creature home, he goes on a quick, simple mission. He warns his companion that he won’t be around, and though it doesn’t reply he gets the feeling that it understands. He returns the next evening unharmed but weary and ravenous, so he makes the galley his first stop back on base.  

He’s standing at the counter, filling a bowl of food goo for himself, when he feels the first tickle against the back of his neck. Earth-bred instincts are hard to break, and Keith slaps at it like he would a mosquito, but the instant his hand comes into contact with it he notices that it’s anything but. It’s warm, and thick, and a little bit damp.

Keith starts and whirls, looking frantically around the room for witnesses. But he’s the only one here. He, and his creature-friend. Or at least, a single tentacle of it, swinging from the overhead vent like a vine.

Keith sighs and traces his fingers along the limb to its tip. He’s never seen any of it in full light before. It’s completely smooth, and a light blue color, almost white in its paleness.

“You’re lucky no one else is in here,” he murmurs to it. He doesn’t know where its ears are, but he can talk to it anyway. “You can’t do this where people will see you.”

As if in response, in acknowledgement and to reassure, the tip of it extends towards Keith’s face and paints a damp line from the hinge of his jaw towards his chin. Keith, surprised, almost takes half a step back, but the warmth of it has him arrested. The creature has never been violent with him, but this proffered tenderness is foreign to Keith. As alien as the blood that runs through his veins.

Unsure of how to react, Keith turns back to his food. He takes the bowl from the countertop and replaces it with the seat of his pants as he hoists himself onto the counter. No one’s bothered to scold him for this since Regris died, so it’s fine. He starts lifting food into his mouth with his spoon, hyperaware of the tentacle that still hovers near his head.

It’s not an awkward thing. It never seems unsure of what to do with itself, or pauses to second guess. Maybe it’s because from here, it seems disembodied, like any of its actions aren’t controlled by something that would react that way anyway. But there definitely is something intelligent behind it, behind the way it threads itself along the line of Keith’s shoulder and rests there, the way a pet bird or a cat might like to perch on its owner’s shoulder.

It bunches at Keith’s deltoid, where the muscles ache with the heavy weight of his mission. It hadn’t been the worst one he’s been on, but in the way none of his missions are easy, this one hadn’t been either. And that always tends to leave a twinge in his shoulders. Nothing that a night on his hard mattress can’t fix, but there are quicker ways to solve this, he learns.

The tentacle kneads, gentle but firm, targeting the knot there. It stings worse, making Keith grit his teeth, but then the muscle yields and Keith feels all his breath leave in a  _ whoosh _ . The knots come undone, and his shoulder throbs with relief and the pleasant feeling of another living thing’s touch on him.

“Thank you,” Keith says quietly. He continues to eat his food goo because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself, but the tentacle has found the sore spot right at the base of his neck and his mouth almost drops open in pleasure.

It wouldn’t be the first time it’s caused that reaction in him.

* * *

 

Speaking of.

It isn’t for a few more days that Keith realizes something is startlingly missing from his new arrangement.

The fact of the matter is that Keith is a hot-blooded being with a body. He’s evolved from species that survive through reproduction. He has needs and desires just like anyone else. Before now, whenever he’d felt that pull, that tug, the need to blow off steam, he’d waited for an opportune moment and stolen off to the planet with the craggy skyline and the dark cave. But ever since his… _ friend’s _ relocation, there hasn’t been the slightest sign of interest in any such activities.

This isn’t what Keith had imagined when he’d paused momentarily to imagine what it might be like to live with a tentacle sex monster. Maybe being strung up by his ankles twice daily and having liquids pumped into his orifices. Waking up in the middle of the night to find himself already stuffed full. Fucked brutally every day, aching all over with the strenuous lifestyle that keeping such a being in his care would encourage.

Though while the creature has no shyness in touching him, and touching him all over, above and under his clothes, in his bed at night and in the shower, even when it slips over parts of him sensitive and private it seems to consider that no different from any other area of his body.

But Keith has a problem tonight. He has a few hours of downtime. And laying back on his bed in the dusky light of his room, watching the pale, ghostly limbs slither restlessly around his walls, he realizes that he’s rather desperate to have them inside of him.

How?

It was so easy before. So expected. He could wander into the cave, and that was all the communication needed. He could strip off his clothes, and that was the invitation. He can’t just sit up in bed and announce that he wants to get fucked. It’s different here. More personal, more intimate. Would the creature be judgmental? Offended? Angry? What if it doesn’t want him?

He doesn’t know where to start, but he reminds himself that this is his bedroom. The creature is his guest. If it doesn’t want to be here, if it doesn’t want to be part of this, it’ll leave. It has its own room it can retreat to. There’s nothing to lose here.

So why does Keith have such a hard time opening his mouth?

“Hey,” he says, slowly.

It knows he’s talking to it. It responds by going still, though it quivers at the tapered ends of each of its long limbs. He swallows his nerves as he watches them.

“It’s been awhile,” he says, idlingly. “Since we. You know.”

He looks down, avoiding looking at the tentacles, as if they can see him back.

“Do you think we could….” He takes a deep breath. “Do that?”

The tentacles remain still. Waiting. The creature doesn’t understand.

Keith huffs out a sigh and sits up. He’s not very good at words. And not words like this, ones that make him talk about things he wants, ones that feel uncomfortable in his throat. He’s better with action, with doing. Which was what made their arrangement so good. Until now.

“You know,” he says, and over he clothes he cups his crotch. He’s actually a little hard already. He’s been thinking about getting fucked all day.

Realization from the creature dawns in the back of his mind.

“I—,” Keith begins to explain himself, but his statement ends in an abrupt, “Mmph!” when a tentacle takes advantage of his open mouth to insert itself in there.

He finds himself lifted from the bed. The clothes are stripped from his body and land with soft sounds against the floor, but he doesn’t hear them beyond the thudding of his heart. He’s handled with care, but also with hunger and with the right amount of force to make him quickly grow from half-hard to fully aching, throbbing. The creature doesn’t waste time. It gets right to its work, and Keith moans.

When Keith is returned, sticky and smiling, to the surface of his bed, he lets himself rest there for an entire five doboshes before rising and tugging clothes on. He figures he can make a quick dash for the showers, clean himself up, and get back to his room for a nice post-orgasm nap. The coast is clear when he pokes his head out from his room, so he darts down the hall.

“Keith?”

Keith freezes in his tracks and turns.

“Kolivan,” he replies.

Kolivan looks him up and down, in all his slick-skinned, sticky-haired glory. Keith knows his face is probably still red, and that his clothing isn’t on straight. He knows he’s a mess.

“Are you okay?” Kolivan asks slowly.

Keith knows Kolivan doesn’t know about his new bedmate. If he knew he would not be so kind as to ask if Keith is okay. If he knew Keith would be ejected from the base, or turned out from the society. Kolivan would not be so calm.

But Keith still feels like Kolivan can see right through him.

“I’m fine,” he replies. And then, because he knows that no lie he can grapple through his mouth right now will be convincing enough to throw the shade of doubt off of him, he turns and makes his way quickly down the hall before Kolivan can say anything else.

* * *

 

Realistically, Keith knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s found out. You can’t keep a secret as big as this. Not a living, breathing creature whose size he can only presume is many times his own, who often sticks all its limbs and appendages through the ventilation system, who leaves it marks on him in indents in his flesh and in his emotions.

Keith has no experience in this, in the keeping of pets, beyond the lizards and scorpions that would scuttle into his shack from between the floorboards, or in sharing a living space with something that isn’t humanoid. He feels this is something like that, but also not at all. He doesn’t totally understand the needs of his friend, though it reassures him that it’s well cared-for. He doesn’t know if someday it will need to stretch its arms further than it already does. If it will feel its captivity is no longer to its liking.

Given all of that, he understands that it’ll come to light someday. He’s not stupid. He knows he can’t hide something like this forever.

But the way it finally happens is something he’d never predicted.

“What  _ is _ that thing?”

Keith jumps. The cozy sensation of the softer edge of sleep is ripped out from under him by a shout like a cracked whip. Startled, groggy, heart pounding, Keith sits up straight and looks around wildly.

Lance, Paladin armor on, stands in the doorway, eyes wide and mouth agape. His gaze is fixed on Keith, who, to be fair, is currently lounging in bed surrounded by the thick and wriggling limbs of his friend, his bedmate. In a moment of heart-pounding clarity Keith finds himself grateful that he’s clothed and was only sleeping.

“What are you doing here?” Keith asks. If his tone is raised loud, aggressive, it’s only in self-defense.

“What are  _ you _ doing with that…—that—?” Lance replies and breaks off into a sputter.

Not for the first time, Keith finds himself frustrated that there are no locks on the doors of the rooms in the base. Not for the first time, Keith wonders why people don’t just  _ knock _ .

It gets worse.

“Is this a bad time?” asks a voice, deep and concerned, from somewhere behind Lance.

All times are bad times, really, and this one is worst of all. But Keith isn’t in a place to answer with that right now. He can barely process what he’s seeing. Lance is in his doorway, and Shiro is peeking around him, taking in Keith’s room and the tentacles with his brows furrowed.

Keith swats the tentacles away gently, and they recede towards the ceiling and then out of sight.

“Why are you here?” he tries again, standing and going to the door to face his guests.

They’re a surprise. A pretty big surprise. He hadn’t expected to see them here, not outside of a mission, not in the doorway of his room on his base. It’s been phoebs, maybe, since he’s contacted either of them.

“Lance and I were in the neighborhood,” Shiro says. “It’s been awhile so we wanted to say hi.” He frowns, a groove appearing between his eyebrows, and looks to the shadowy corners of the room. “But um, can you explain what that thing was?”

Keith can feel the color rising to his face as pinpricks of heat. How does he explain this one, especially to Shiro and Lance of all people? _This one time we were on a planet and I wandered into a cave to have sex with a tentacle monster. Months later, I decided to bring it home with me_. Yeah, that’ll go over well. It definitely won’t be the tipping point for Shiro, convincing him that Keith is a lost cause for good. It definitely won’t be Lance’s favorite point of gossip for the next three weeks.

“He’s my friend,” Keith eventually settles on. It’s not a lie. If he had anyone these days he would truly consider a friend, it would be the creature who listens patiently every night as Keith talks quietly about his day just to remember what his own voice sounds like.

“Your friend?” Lance repeats in a deadpan. “Is he a Marmorite or something?”

“No,” replies Keith.

Lance and Shiro are quiet for a long moment. The thought occurs to Keith that they may be waiting for him to elaborate, but they’re going to be waiting here for a very long time if that’s what they want. Finally, Shiro steps forward into the room.

“Well, can we meet your friend?” he asks.

Keith sighs, but he nods.

Once upstairs, Keith leads Lance and Shiro to the storage room door.  

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” he says quietly. “They don’t know he’s here.”

The door slides open and light splashes in, revealing very little of the dark room beyond. Keith knows that in one of the far corners, the hulking body of his companion rests, but all they can see from here are the narrowed ends of long, pale tentacles. Lance and Shiro file in, and Keith shuts the door behind them, leaving them in darkness except for the glow of their Paladin armor. He’s barely in the room before one appendage approaches him and wraps around his wrist in a casual way. He tries to ignore Lance and Shiro’s eyes on him.

“Hey,” he calls out into the shadows. “These are some of the Paladins. Lance and Shiro.”

“Nice to meet you,” Shiro says, clearly clinging to propriety to work his way through his confusion, staring off futilely into the murky darkness.

In response, a tentacle rises towards him. It stretches out curiously, cautiously, and stops to hover right before his eyes. Shiro lets it hang there for a long moment before raising his own hand to meet it, brushing his fingertips over its smooth surface. With slow, broadcasted movements, it wraps itself around his fingers.

“Hmm,” says Lance, squinting at it in the dark. When another tentacle reaches towards him, he does the same. But unlike Shiro, whose expression smoothes out into something calm, if curious, Lance keeps his skeptical glare.

“So uh, how long have you two known each other?” Lance asks.

Keith shuffles, and the loop around his wrist tightens comfortingly.

“Awhile,” he replies. He’s not trying to avoid the question, exactly, but he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what will make this alright in Lance’s eyes. What will cause Shiro to stop wearing that expression of veiled concern.

There’s probably nothing he can say. Someone better at talking to people, maybe, would understand how to handle this situation, how to explain it so that it doesn’t seem so questionable. But Keith has never considered that one of his strong points. It’s probably the reason he’s chosen an enormous taciturn alien as his sole companion instead of spending time with anyone else. 

“Let’s go get something to eat,” Keith says, turning away from the creature and heading for the door.

As they’re leaving, he hears Shiro bidding it goodbye, but as soon as they’re all in the hallway and the door is shut behind them again, Lance is in his face.   

“That thing could probably kill you!” Lance says. He seems to think he’s whispering, but it’s loud. “Rip your head clean off. Use your dying body as a hospitable environment for its young!”

Keith feels a fond little smile spread over his features. His cheeks get warm. “Yeah, he probably could.”

Lance takes one look at him, and his face screws up in disgust. “Okay. Weird.”

They eat plain food goo in the galley. Lance makes a face as Keith gives him his plate, and Keith allows himself a moment of remembering what it’s like to eat Hunk’s cooking for every meal, or if not that a specially-prepared meal from a group of grateful alien locals. Those kinds of comforts are easily sacrificed in the face of duty, though. Shiro thanks him graciously.

Keith, who was expecting some war discussion or lecture or  _ something _ rather than a casual chat over lunch, is surprised when Lance launches right into a story about a planet liberation mishap. It turns out, as they talk, that there really wasn’t any reason behind the visit except to say hello. Shiro even asks him questions about how he’s been, what he’s been doing.

For people who haven’t bothered to call once, they’re very warm towards him.

They only bring up the creature one more time before leaving. Lance mentions it in passing, looking now more curious than concerned.

“I’m glad you have someone to spend time with,” is what Shiro says, his smile soft. “I’d love to meet him again someday.” Lance nods along.

It probably won’t happen, Keith knows. But something painful prickles at the back of his mind. The concept of Shiro and Lance becoming friends with,  _ cozy _ with, the creature is one so warm and welcomed it hurts to think about, because no matter how badly Keith wants it, it’s impossible.

* * *

 

“Keith.”

Kolivan is waiting for him when he lands from his mission. Keith is sweating from the adrenaline of piloting through heavy fire, his hair plastered to his forehead. His elbow hurts from where he jammed it against the seat when he took a hit. He’s tired, but not too tired that he can’t do whatever the Blade needs him for next.

“Kolivan,” he replies respectfully. “What can I do?”

“Nothing now. You’re dismissed,” Kolivan says. “But when you have time. We need to rebuild some of the support structures on level three. Please temporarily relocate your…companion until we’re finished.”

Keith freezes in place. “Sorry?”

“What,” Kolivan says. “Do you really believe I don’t know exactly what’s happening on my base?”

Keith is wordless. He opens his mouth, and doesn’t find anything at the tip of his dry tongue, so he shuts it again. Rinse and repeat. Three times.

“You’re…okay with it?” he finally manages to splutter out.

An answer beyond a grunt never really comes, but that’s answer enough. If Kolivan wasn’t okay with it, Keith would know by now.

Keith watches Kolivan walk away, as if the interaction had never happened. It’s surreal. But Keith will gladly take this turn of events over any alternatives. He just has to move the creature into his room with him for awhile. And maybe he doesn’t have to keep it a secret anymore, either.

Still feeling the aftereffects of his shock, Keith stumbles upstairs to the creature. Its many, many arms are there, waiting, open for him.

For now, at least, he gets to keep his home.  


End file.
